[UPDATE: December 17, 2011: Now that the Facebook Timeline has rolled out worldwide, the way you access your Employer field has changed. Under your Cover image, there are three possible ways to access your Work and Education details and all the other data that was previously under your “Info” tab. See screenshot below – 1) click anywhere in the shaded area, or 2) click the Update Info button, or 3) click About.

Once on the Work and Education Section, click the “Edit” button in the top right of that section. Then begin to type in your own fan page if you work for yourself, or the fan page of your employer. Then add your Position, City/Town and a Description. For the position, you could use standard wording like “CEO” or you can put anything you wish, e.g. I have “Passionate Social Media Leader.” 🙂

If you currently have more than one job, as far as I know, you can only hyperlink one company fan page on your Timeline. I haven’t seen more than one employer linked in this section. However, it’s certainly feasible to add more into that section and when visitors/friends click on your About section, they’ll see the other jobs/positions. If you have difficulty in getting your main job to show as the featured one on your Timeline, you may need to delete the other jobs/employers and add the main one last.] End update.

Original post follows:

When Facebook upgraded personal profiles to the new design, most of the new features took effect without much effort on the user’s part. If you don’t like a certain photo in your five-photo strip at the top, just “x” it out to hide it from showing at the top. Tabs became links down the side, and we lost the most recent status update at the very top. (Oh, how I miss that feature as well as the wee mini-bio box!).

One of the most significant changes with the new profile design is the personal info at the top of your profile, right under your name. This section contains your job title, place of work, where you live, your birthday, education, hometown, languages, college/high school and a few other pertinent fields.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you prefer not to share any of these areas, just leave those fields blank when you edit your profile information. As you can see in the screenshot below, I choose to only show my title, employer, city of residence and birthday. I figure less is more when it comes to personal info on Facebook! By the way, only you can see fields left blank as indicated by links inviting you to “Add your xxxx.”

[Also, hot tip: be sure to change your date of birth to only show month and day – not the year – to add a layer of protection].

The #1 mistake? Your Employer link is a Community Page!

Go to your Facebook profile now and mouseover your Employer field – you’ll see it’s not linked to your fan page! When Facebook changed your profile to the new design, it automatically hyperlinked your EMPLOYER field to an auto-generated COMMUNITY PAGE!

(What is a Community Page? It’s an auto-generated wiki style of page that, in some ways, “competes” with your official fan page… at least, it can be confusing for some people when they’re trying to find you. For a full explanation of Community Pages and what you need to know, see this post.)

If you work for yourself and have your own Facebook Fan Page (or you’re an employee and your employer has a fan page), I highly recommend that you change this Employer field to your Fan Page.

I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of personal Facebook profiles where the user is clearly blissfully unaware that they are missing out on an opportunity to promote their Fan Page right at the top of their profiles. We have no idea how many people might be browsing our personal profiles, whether they are friends or not, and you may as well take the opportunity to promote your fan page.

How to add your Facebook Fan Page as your Employer:

The process is straightforward:

Click Edit Profile > then go to the Education and Work section.

Begin typing the name of your fan page in the Employer field.

If you see your fan page in the dropdown menu, select it.

Then fill out the remaining fields (Position, City/Town, Description and Time Period). If you also add in any business partners/colleagues, this will show on their profile too under the Employer section.

Click Add Job.

You can also add Project(s) to any position and add business partners/colleagues (again, this shows on their Employer section).

Voila!

If you find that your fan page just does not want to show up in the Employer field, there is a Ninja workaround which takes a tad of tecchie knowledge. See this helpful tutorial.

That’s it. I’m sure there are many other “mistakes” some Facebook users make on their personal profiles (besides having a personal profile in the name of a business which is a violation of Facebook’s terms!). But, I feel this one mistake with the missed opportunity to promote your fan page is the most overlooked area.

Any questions, let me know in the comments below. Also, what other mistakes or tips for optimizing profiles do you know of? Feel free to share!

Thanks for the helpful tip! Question, I am in a relationship with the love of my life and am happy to tell the facebook world about it via my relationship status, however, it’s not one of the first things I want people to see when viewing my profile. How do I keep that status and remove it from showing at the top of my profile page? Any help you can share will be much appreciated. Thanks Mari!

I love that you keep us so up to date on everything Facebook!
-Christina Hills

Ray

Oh, Mari, I love you, you know I do but I’ve tried this a while back without success and today I have to report that I’m still unable to make this work with either the “easy” instructions or using WebDeveloper.

I agree this is an issue, but wouldn’t call it a mistake on the part of the user. Facebook’s inability to autodetect an existing business page is the issue. This is probably one of the biggest contributors to the clutter in Facebook Search (Don’t even get me started with facebook places). Doesn’t make sense why Facebook wouldn’t have a system in place to automatically merge identical community pages with an official business page.

Hi Ray. Yes, the ninja workaround doesn’t always work and for anyone who is unable to figure out how to get the correct link inserted it would be best to delete the current employer information rather than linking to a blank community page Facebook auto generated.

Mari, there’s one other benefit and spot that the information will appear and that’s on our Info page. In most cases, when you visit a personal profile of someone you aren’t already friends with, you’ll see their Info page and the Employer block is right at the top of the list of interests. If we’ve linked to our own fan page it will show our avatar and the link to our Page, as well as any custom text we may have used. Here’s mine… http://www.facebook.com/hughbriss?sk=info

For those, like myself, who have attempted this before and again today yet still it failed, I bring an alternate solution I used.

What I did was merged our Facebook generic community page with our Facebook place page. While I would still rather have our FAN page correctly portrayed, this at least gives you a page you can control and is populated with relevant content.

This first requires that you claim your community and place page, then you can merge them. This take a bit of time but is worth it. This is what the resulting page looks like » http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cirrus-ABS/116035328461085

Note that I have “LIKED” two of our Cirrus ABS FAN pages, see left side, by selecting “use page as” from the merged community/place page then visiting our FAN pages.

Hope this helps. Feel free to friend me 🙂

Stefanie

I’ve been dying to know how to change this. Our community page has an old logo.

John Barnett

This is a great idea and would love to implement it, but all tries have failed. I’m willing to admit I don’t have enough tech mojo, but if I can’t figure it out, I certainly won’t get the others in the company to try. Any other ideas because this vexes me greatly and I would really like to figure this one out.

Great information. The tutorial you referred to was very helpful. It took a few tries but the link to my correct company page was effected using step No. 8 in the tutorial. Really glad to have the correct company page now referred to on my personal profile

Lonnie Robinson

Hey Mari! Great minds think alike. 🙂 It’s funny you mentioned, “How to add your Facebook Fan Page as your Employer”. I recently created a video which illustrates this highly overlooked feature on facebook. I was surprised to see how many experts in our industry don’t utilize this. I used Willie Crawford as an example and sent him the video. He changed his employer within 5 minutes! 🙂 Please watch the video and please feel free to share it with your audience: http://www.ewealthology.com/fan-page-trick

Thanks Mari!

Make TODAY Your Greatest!

Lonnie

Julie

Thanks Mari, I did the Techie stuff too, but result is fantastic, Thanks so much!

Thanks for prompting me to go look at my profile again, Mari. I had already changed my “employer” to my fan page a few weeks ago. However, when I double checked it, the “community page” for my website was actually showing. When I went in to edit it, sure enough, my fan page was still in the list, but below this other page. I just deleted the listing that was showing and now my fan page is on top again.

Hi Matthew – oh sure thing, just set that in your privacy: customize settings > relationships > then select friends only or customize with a friend list and that should do it. You can try the preview feature to see how your profile looks to certain people.

Mari, thanks for posting this. However, I have tried to do this in the past and it does not work. I have a fan page for my business but it doesn’t appear in the drop-down. Also, I technically work at two places at the moment but on my profile it defaults to the other job that is not my own company. 🙁

Thank you Mari! You’ve helped us so many times, thank you for being such a valuable resource! 🙂

Jason Fox

Great tip. I just clicked mine and lo and behold it was a community page… WHY Facebook? Anyway I am on my way to correcting that, but my page does not show up. So I am using the secret ninja technique to get it to show up. Wish me Luck.

Ya, I wasn’t saying it’s a user mistake! 🙂 It’s for sure an oversight on Facebook’s part… beats me why there are so many useless Community Pages (and Place Pages) floating in limbo with no owners! I mean, Place Pages are useful for sure for local businesses who claim them and use them. But there’s a lot of dupes. Agreed re merging!

Yay you got it to work Nancy!! Hey, btw, did you know your Fan Page is a Place Page? Not sure if you intended that, but unless you do have peeps physically coming to your location, you can remove your full mailing address from the Info tab and it should morph back to a regular Fan Page. There’s no harm in having it a Place Page, but just FYI.

Hey Ray – how I ended up getting my own fan page in there a while back when I made the change was to delete the previous info and select a really popular fan page like Starbucks. Then just replace their ID # with mine using the web developer toolbar trick.

Ewealthology

Yes, thanks for the tip. BTW, there was no way I could explain this tutorial in two minutes or less! 🙂

Ewealthology

Hey Hugh. That’s the way my profile looks when not logged in. I will change that too. Thanks!

Thank you for this! I had a little different of a scenario, I had my fan page listed as people>artist and it would not let me change my employer to my artist self. I changed the fan page to be a local business and voila, I was able to put myself as my employer on my profile! Your post clued me in that this might be the issue. =)

Dolly Madison

No one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to enter valid information in these fields. Always wanted a summer birthday? Go for it. Always wanted to be Warren Buffet’s financial advisor? Be it. Didn’t you graduate with honors from Oxford? Have some fun!

Ah, I see the problem. It’s not that I wasn’t logged in, it’s because I was viewing your profile while using Facebook as my Page and not myself. Kind of a strange bug I think. Apparently Facebook treats us as not being logged in if we’re in Page mode.

I’m pretty sure I’ve violated: “having a personal profile in the name of a business which is a violation” ..I’m at Facebook.com/AustinConcert which is apparently my personal account. I’ve created my business pages out of the personal profile, but I’m afraid (based on your post) I’ve violated FB terms.

And.. I have 4 really important biz pages coming out of the original personal account.

Thanks for sharing, I think the Employer field or link on everyone’s profile is the biggest
blunder facebook makes. 90 percent of the people who try to do their biz on this social
site, will see when they click on “where they work” , “employer” or business it goes to a bizzarre briefcase with zero or very little fans.

If you go back into your facebook profile and write in the exact name of your business or where you want it to link to it works great.

Before it redirecting unique visitors to that crazy latent image or graphic of a 60’s briefcase. Anyone who has a challenge with this I would be happy to help them. We see this so often, and if you ware relying on facebook as your business URL (another mistake), be sure to go to mozilla.org and add “Facebook Archive” download it in Firefox browser and it will appear in your menu of Firefox. It saves images, contacts, and posts, but not sure about emails, maybe.
But you would never get that from FB, which have a goofy archive on its site I do NOT trust.

Nothing is worse than getting your account hacked into and having FB close your account for no reason or explanation. Thanks for sharing Mary! You’re the best.

Anonymous

Keep trying, too me half hour on my account, then a few minutes on other friends I helped or maintained for them.

Anonymous

Bob,
Good job, you really should have to fiddle with and Facebook should have told us when they did their great pitch about the updates. thx. for sharing. I had to do something similar, but when you change it copy exactly the title or sometimes the URL it also works. G.

Giselle

Mari, I followed all of your steps, but Facebook won’t allow me to add the name of my page.?. Any help would be appreciated.

Hey Darlene – you’re absolutely fine. The link you shared goes to your personal profile which is in your name – the actual URL (username) can be anything you want. And, in fact, you do get one chance on your personal profile to change the username if you want to.

Mari, just a word of advice for anyone who doesn’t want to bother with the “techie” Ninja work-around. I tried this about 3 weeks ago and it didn’t work but I didn’t want to bother with all the steps necessary to make Facebook behave. Tried it again yesterday after being reminded by this post and it worked like a charm. Maybe it just takes a little patience to wait for Facebook to catch up 🙂
Thanks Mari and I’ll “see” you at the webinar.

Michelle

I tried some of the other techniques including the ninjas without success. However, this cutting and pasting technique worked for me on the first try! It’s clearly the simplest and easiest solution if your page doesn’t show up when you type it in to the employer box. Thanks so much for sharing!

I would not call it as a “mistake” per se. It’s just a simple overlook. With sooo many things going around Facebook (chats, messages, wall posts, etc), people sometimes tend to disregard the difference between community page and fan page, which the latter has a great advantage over the former.

I agree with Gabriella, the old Facebook’s design and layout is more superior than the present one. But technology and feature-wise, the present FB has the upper hand. It even changed the way we do businesses these days.

It’s a great tip. When the change took place I made sure that all our employees had the correct wording so as to get to the fan page. Only I assumed our boss knew & it took him a wee while to catch on:)

Beth – One of my Facebook peeps is having the same problem. Her page is listed as Media/News/Publishing and she’s not able to see it at all when she tries to add it as ’employer.’ I’ve suggested she change it to Companies & Organizations and we’ll see if that works. Often, Facebook rolls out these features for Pages in certain categories, and as time goes on they roll it out to all the Page categories.

This is such an awesome tip Mari! I use this as a cue that a business could use my help in social media and send them the link to your post. I share this link and your name with everyone I talk to about Facebook! http://bit.ly/MariSmithFBTip1
Debbie Horovitchhttp://thesparkleagency.com

Ya, could be called an “oversight.” However, the importance of a blog headline is that it gets people’s attention and I felt the word “mistake” was more compelling and would reach and help more people! 🙂

This was a much needed post explaining such an important, but
over-looked aspect of Facebook. There is a huge increase in users now a days because of new functionalities.

Ingrid

Hello Mari,

I had a friend on facebook and suddenly she disappeared from my list. She knows nothing about. Through friends finder, I can not find her. (not on my account) or through my husband’s account.
I can not find a solution through facebook.
Through google I went to the search and I came across you out.
Hence I ask the question to you and you might have a solution.
Incidentally, I read that several people at a problem.
Need a solution for me?
I’m waiting for your
answer.Best
regards from the
Netherlands Ingrid HuisinkThanks for your helpI hope you understand the text, my English is not so good and I have sought help via google translator

Hal1127

Just learned something new! Thank you for the tip. I made the change to my profile and it worked perfectly.

Martha

Great tip – thanks very much. You’ve just earned a new fan.

Kimberly

I just discovered this post today and made the change! I was wondering how I had become a Community page and now I know. I’ve linked my profile to my Facebook page and added the two eBooks I’ve written. Thank you for sharing this easy tip.

If anyone had trouble linking their Facebook page, I found that I had to identify myself as the page owner so that I could link the profile to the page. Whew!

Thanks Mari for sharing this! I went and looked at my profile and realized that all of my previous companies were linking to a community page versus my company’s branded page. I look forward to hearing your other Facebook Do’s and Dont’s at tomorrow’s event with Social Media Club San Diego.

I have a question! I work two jobs. I just now added my second job onto facebook, and it automatically became the one in that box of info at the top, but it’s just my weekend job. Is there a way to make my first and primary job the one that shows up top? (I’m assuming that deleting and re-adding my primary one again would move it back to the box but I’m seeing if there’s an easier way.)

Christopher Gamble

This is OUT OF DATE….Any idea how to put TWO or more Linked Pages in you ABOUT area in Profile on your Cover Page…I.E. It takes my first business Stratico as my employer but won’t ad my second business FIRST IMPRESSION too. I want the cover to show more than one employee so I can link to more than one PAGE.t

Christopher Gamble

Especially in COVERS…How do you get TWO or MORE employees (Pages) to sit there?

Hi there — I don’t know the answer to this without going in to try and add a second Employer on my own profile… which of course then goes out into the News Feed. Grr! My guess is is you have more than one “Current” employers/jobs, that the last one you added will be the primary one linked under your Cover image.

How do I “control” who works at my buisness. I have people saying they are “working” at my buisness, or that we “employ” them and they can put themselves as boss or director etc. Can I control this on other peoples profiles, allowing them to post that or not???

I am trying to find out why I can’t just type in a fan page name and it take me there. For instance, I am trying to type in my place of employment’s fan page, however, it does not take me there. I have to go to my bosses personal facebook page then click on the link of where she works then it takes me to the page. Why? Even my boss doesn’t know why.

Lisa

I own my own company and would like to insert my company logo. Other logos such as universities and bigger company logos come up automatically—Is there a way to insert my own personal company logo?

I went to the page above “Ninja workaround” to try and populate the page name for a client. I’ve done this on my own personal profile without a problem. But we can’t get it to populate with her page name and I’ve tried the web dev add-on for both browsers. Any other suggestions? Thanks! 🙂

anil

Thanq,,i have done it …

Judy Espaillat

Hi there!

I loved the tutorial. However I must be missing something because the grey box does not appear for me when using Web Developer. I follow everything step by step and when I click forms and Display Form Details I get all this techie jargon & I cannot edit a thing. I am thinking I must be doing something wrong or FB changed some setting which does not allow this to happen.

Please help! I have been trying to link my fan page to my profile all night 🙁

TIA

Frustrated

I cannot change the title of my position. I’ve read all this stuff and Facebook makes it impossible to change.

Beth

I am in private practice as a licensed psychologist. I have tried to edit the work information and followed the tips above step-by-step. But when I put my information in the job heading and press enter, it just disappears as if I have no job information. I am self taught and definitely not a technie nor do I know anyone who is. Any other ideas?

Hi Mari! I love how your work position of “social media leader!” isn’t hyperlinked but cannot figure out for the of me how to unlink mine. No matter what I put as work position, Facebook automatically links to a blank page. Any ideas?

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